Abe Vigoda's Ghost:Can you load apps from Apples app store on your Android device? No? Welcome to a walled garden.Of course why would you want to load an iOS app on your Android device, since just about any app is available on both platforms.

WTF?? I think you forgot your meds this morning. Who said anything about Android ... in fact I explicitly avoided mentioning competitors.

Apple's 'walled garden' philosophy is a fact ... they are proud of having a safe little area for their children users to play in. Sure, some jail-break their way out of this 'jail' but most don't.

I merely expressed my opinion that living in this 'safe', restricted world holds no interest to me.

Personally, I'm gonna continue to choose not to live in a 'walled garden'.

But it's a big, largely malware-free garden.

It is also a "choice free" garden. And now that the charging cable will have a chip in it with copywrited software ... it is going to be a "3rd party hardware-free garden" ... reducing choice and increasing costs further.

Farking Canuck:You are throwing a generalization on a very specific example.

He is not talking about a vague threat of something better being around the corner. He is talking about seeing the next thing right in front of you, almost in reach but deciding on going with the old thing instead - and then complaining that it is old.

It is not a smooth curve ... sometimes things go up in a step and purchasing just before that step is a bad idea.

This. I specifically waited for the second wave of Android Gingerbread phones with dual core processors. That is why I own a Galaxy S2. It has since updated to ICS and runs fine. I want the Galaxy S3 so badly, but I'm fine with waiting for the Galaxy S4 which will likely come out just after Google releases a Jelly Bean phone in about a year from now. I'm just about a year in on the S2 and have no issues with running slowly or lack of features. My phone can do anything any other phone can do, but isn't the latest and greatest phone on the market.

BilldaCat10:As someone else had said already, there is ALWAYS a new Android phone around the corner. HTC releases handsets on a monthly basis at times it seems. At some point you have to stop waiting and buy.

The lack of commitment is probably enough to keep me away and deal with the smaller screen size. I'm not going to drop $ on a Galaxy SIII and have it be abandoned again 9 months down the road.

You have to be intelligent about when you buy. Wait for the first phones with the new Android OS to launch and buy the second wave. The Galaxy S3 is the first "preloaded with ICS" phone for Samsung, so it is a good buy. The only change that might happen is a phone that does quad core like the non-USA Galaxy S3, but in all honesty that isn't a big shift.

Jellybean is out for developers, but won't be on phones sold in store by Samsung for at least a year.

Hacker_X:It wasn't cheap or slow (processor wise) when it came out. In fact there are still phones being released with less RAM and slower CPUs. There is absolutely no technical reason it can't support Android 4.0 or 4.1 HTC even said they were going to release 4.0 for it and had a working version and then decided to not release it. The only reason it runs slow is all the bundled garbage AT&T insisted on jamming into it and ruining a perfectly good phone. Oh, and when the Inspire was released last year it was 600 dollars. If that is a "cheapy" phone then what do you consider to be an expensive one?

The introductory price was $99.99 with a 2 year contract. In my experience any phone that is under $150 isn't worth buying if you're interested in something that will last.

If you bought the HTC Inspire when it came out, you made an uneducated purchasing decision. That fall there was a 25% uptick in phone specs. The Galaxy S2 came out with 1 gig ram (compared to 768 MB) and a 1.2 gig hz dual core processor (compared to a 1.0 gig hz processor).

Inspire launched with Android 2.2.1 (Froyo) when Gingerbread was nearly ready to market. That is like buying a 2.3.5 phone last February when everyone knew 4.0 was ready.

bighairyguy:mjohnson71: I need to replace my iPhone 3G that has served me well for almost 3 years and will finally get the iPhone 5 (or whatever it's called). But what grinds my gears is that when the iPhone 5 gets released I'll have a legion of Apple fanboys in front of me in line. They'll all be super anxious and acting like they're going to die because they just have to replace their 10 month old iPhone 4s' as soon as humanly possible.

I was on my way through the mall to get a 4S on opening day. There were 50 people in line at the Apple Store but only one at the AT&T store. I only had a 90 second wait. They also grandfathered in my unlimited data plan.

Dude if you don't buy your iPhone at the Apple store it isn't a real iPhone. You have to construct a shrine facing toward Apple headquarters and sacrifice a goat to Steve Jobs to get into Genius Heaven.

I was going to say the same thing. In my days before marriage/kids, I'd be a lot more inclined to go the open source route, or jailbreak, tinker, what have you. Now, my life/priorities have changed, and I simply don't have the time to deal with it. I'll take the walled garden, so that when I take a photo with my phone, it shows up on my other devices and I don't have to fut ...

Isn't it funny what getting older can do to you? How your time becomes way more valuable....and an hour of loading this and updating that just seems like such a waste.

More like when you get older you get worse at time management because you don't keep up with current technology.

My mom spends an hour each month writing checks and sealing envelopes to pay bills. I load up my bank app, type in the dollar values and hit send. The bank prints checks, addresses and sends them for me.

gingerjet:Farking Canuck: Apple's 'walled garden' philosophy is a fact ... they are proud of having a safe little area for their children users to play in. Sure, some jail-break their way out of this 'jail' but most don't.

I merely expressed my opinion that living in this 'safe', restricted world holds no interest to me.

If one has to "jailbreak" anything to make it useful to them - than something is very seriously wrong. I don't jailbreak my refrigerator or my car. I buy a tool to get a job done because I have a life to live, work to do, and beer to drink. I'm continuously amused by people who by Android based devices with 3 seconds of battery life and having to break into the phone to remove the crap off them. Life it too short dude to deal with such shiat.

/pats little Farking Canuck on the head

If you've ever changed the temperature knob on your fridge/freezer, then you've jailbroken your refrigerator. Android devices cannot be jailbroken, only rooted. There are no limitations on Android devices.

Theaetetus:H31N0US: mjohnson71: I need to replace my iPhone 3G that has served me well for almost 3 years and will finally get the iPhone 5 (or whatever it's called). But what grinds my gears is that when the iPhone 5 gets released I'll have a legion of Apple fanboys in front of me in line. They'll all be super anxious and acting like they're going to die because they just have to replace their 10 month old iPhone 4s' as soon as humanly possible.

So wait a couple months until the fanfare dies down.

Or get a Samsung.

Yeah, then no one will be in front of you in line.

Apple has lines because the concept of inventory management evades them. They'll catch up to early 90s business strategy eventually.

Maybe I have a crap phone (HTC Inspire). I'm glad it has a removable battery, as I've had to physically remove it a few dozen times now when the phone locks up and I can't do anything else. It's slow and sluggish, the Android Market just doesn't hold a candle to Apple in some respects (chiefly: GameCenter. To be able to easily play with friends, compare achievements, etc.. Android has nothing like it. And NO, mobage does not count.). The quality of apps is generally better I've found (even between the same app - compare Tiny Tower on iOS and Android, it's hands down better on iOS), probably due to Apple needing to approve it.

And as someone who owns a Macbook Pro and an iMac, the incentive to stick in the walled garden is a factor. It's nice when things just work sometimes.

Again, maybe the HTC Inspire has soured me on it all. It sucks that the phones evolve so fast, and that HTC has decided "no ICS for you". At least with Apple, there's a decent history of being allowed to run the next version of iOS on your device. I'm extremely hesitant about buying another phone, having it be obsolete in 6-9 months, and being told I'm not getting the next Android OS and if I want it, shell out for a new phone.

Anyway, I'm ready to throw this phone through a window. The only disappointing thing about what seems to be the new consensus iPhone is the screen size - I really wanted something wider. The screen size is a huge factor in why I switched to Android, and it may end up being enough in the end to keep me on it. We'll see. My co-worker has the Galaxy S3, and it does look pretty nice.

/open source web programmer.//needs to stop playing the waste of time that is tiny tower

Complains that HTC Inspire (cheapy piece of shiat phone) runs slow, then complains that HTC won't let him upgrade to a newer OS that doesn't support his cheapy shiat hardware. LULZ.

Personally, I'm gonna continue to choose not to live in a 'walled garden'.

Can you load apps from Apples app store on your Android device? No? Welcome to a walled garden.Of course why would you want to load an iOS app on your Android device, since just about any app is available on both platforms.The 'walled garden' expression is pretty much meaningless.You can make the argument that people who buy into the Apple ecosystem are locked into using Apple devices, if they want to continue using the apps they purchased from the Apple app store. Since I have never actually found an app worth buying, switching between platforms is not an issue for me. And I'll bet this is the case for many people.

Devices I currently own:Samsung Galaxy S2iPad 3Nexus 7

False equivalency. Apple won't let the apps out, it has nothing to do with Android not letting them in.

Theaetetus:H31N0US: mjohnson71: I need to replace my iPhone 3G that has served me well for almost 3 years and will finally get the iPhone 5 (or whatever it's called). But what grinds my gears is that when the iPhone 5 gets released I'll have a legion of Apple fanboys in front of me in line. They'll all be super anxious and acting like they're going to die because they just have to replace their 10 month old iPhone 4s' as soon as humanly possible.

The app store difference is a matter of philosophy. I'd prefer to take risks in the outside world than live in a sterilized cage. Sure, I might get hurt if I'm not careful, but I also have much greater opportunity.

That being said.... I wish I could lock most other computer and phone users in a sterilized cage. I don't mind taking risks and cleaning up my own messes when I goof up, but I'm not a fan of having to save everyone else when they do something stupid and don't know how to react.

In my younger days, I was never would have gone in for this "walled garden" nonsense....that was for non technical wieners who were too dumb not to screw up their device and needed to be spoon fed their applications.

Now I'm older...and I don't have the time/inclination to worry about this kind of thing. Playing around with gadgets plays a far smaller role in my life than it used to....and as such my priorities and preferences have changed. What I really like now, is a well designed, well screwed together device that will last me a good while and that I don't have to put much thought into. My 3GS was my first even Apple product (I thought the day would never come)...but a few years later, it still works fine and simply does what I need it to do. I don't have the need to chase down all of the latest functionality anymore, or to be the first one to make some feature work. Let someone else grunt it out....I'll download for free or a buck in a month when most of the bugs are worked out. I have other interests these days...

I was going to say the same thing. In my days before marriage/kids, I'd be a lot more inclined to go the open source route, or jailbreak, tinker, what have you. Now, my life/priorities have changed, and I simply don't have the time to deal with it. I'll take the walled garden, so that when I take a photo with my phone, it shows up on my other devices and I don't have to futz with it, and I can easily play a quick 5 minute game with a friend online, etc.

H31N0US:mjohnson71: I need to replace my iPhone 3G that has served me well for almost 3 years and will finally get the iPhone 5 (or whatever it's called). But what grinds my gears is that when the iPhone 5 gets released I'll have a legion of Apple fanboys in front of me in line. They'll all be super anxious and acting like they're going to die because they just have to replace their 10 month old iPhone 4s' as soon as humanly possible.

The app store difference is a matter of philosophy. I'd prefer to take risks in the outside world than live in a sterilized cage. Sure, I might get hurt if I'm not careful, but I also have much greater opportunity.

That being said.... I wish I could lock most other computer and phone users in a sterilized cage. I don't mind taking risks and cleaning up my own messes when I goof up, but I'm not a fan of having to save everyone else when they do something stupid and don't know how to react.

In my younger days, I was never would have gone in for this "walled garden" nonsense....that was for non technical wieners who were too dumb not to screw up their device and needed to be spoon fed their applications.

Now I'm older...and I don't have the time/inclination to worry about this kind of thing. Playing around with gadgets plays a far smaller role in my life than it used to....and as such my priorities and preferences have changed. What I really like now, is a well designed, well screwed together device that will last me a good while and that I don't have to put much thought into. My 3GS was my first even Apple product (I thought the day would never come)...but a few years later, it still works fine and simply does what I need it to do. I don't have the need to chase down all of the latest functionality anymore, or to be the first one to make some feature work. Let someone else grunt it out....I'll download for free or a buck in a month when most of the bugs are worked out. I have other interests these days...

Maybe I have a crap phone (HTC Inspire). I'm glad it has a removable battery, as I've had to physically remove it a few dozen times now when the phone locks up and I can't do anything else. It's slow and sluggish, the Android Market just doesn't hold a candle to Apple in some respects (chiefly: GameCenter. To be able to easily play with friends, compare achievements, etc.. Android has nothing like it. And NO, mobage does not count.). The quality of apps is generally better I've found (even between the same app - compare Tiny Tower on iOS and Android, it's hands down better on iOS), probably due to Apple needing to approve it.

And as someone who owns a Macbook Pro and an iMac, the incentive to stick in the walled garden is a factor. It's nice when things just work sometimes.

Again, maybe the HTC Inspire has soured me on it all. It sucks that the phones evolve so fast, and that HTC has decided "no ICS for you". At least with Apple, there's a decent history of being allowed to run the next version of iOS on your device. I'm extremely hesitant about buying another phone, having it be obsolete in 6-9 months, and being told I'm not getting the next Android OS and if I want it, shell out for a new phone.

Anyway, I'm ready to throw this phone through a window. The only disappointing thing about what seems to be the new consensus iPhone is the screen size - I really wanted something wider. The screen size is a huge factor in why I switched to Android, and it may end up being enough in the end to keep me on it. We'll see. My co-worker has the Galaxy S3, and it does look pretty nice.

/open source web programmer.//needs to stop playing the waste of time that is tiny tower

Personally, I'm gonna continue to choose not to live in a 'walled garden'.

Can you load apps from Apples app store on your Android device? No? Welcome to a walled garden.Of course why would you want to load an iOS app on your Android device, since just about any app is available on both platforms.The 'walled garden' expression is pretty much meaningless.You can make the argument that people who buy into the Apple ecosystem are locked into using Apple devices, if they want to continue using the apps they purchased from the Apple app store. Since I have never actually found an app worth buying, switching between platforms is not an issue for me. And I'll bet this is the case for many people.

Devices I currently own:Samsung Galaxy S2iPad 3Nexus 7

Or that Apple can remotely brick your phone? That's no bueno.

You can turn that 'feature' off. Android devices have a remote wipe option also.

mjohnson71:I need to replace my iPhone 3G that has served me well for almost 3 years and will finally get the iPhone 5 (or whatever it's called). But what grinds my gears is that when the iPhone 5 gets released I'll have a legion of Apple fanboys in front of me in line. They'll all be super anxious and acting like they're going to die because they just have to replace their 10 month old iPhone 4s' as soon as humanly possible.

I need to replace my iPhone 3G that has served me well for almost 3 years and will finally get the iPhone 5 (or whatever it's called). But what grinds my gears is that when the iPhone 5 gets released I'll have a legion of Apple fanboys in front of me in line. They'll all be super anxious and acting like they're going to die because they just have to replace their 10 month old iPhone 4s' as soon as humanly possible.

The app store difference is a matter of philosophy. I'd prefer to take risks in the outside world than live in a sterilized cage. Sure, I might get hurt if I'm not careful, but I also have much greater opportunity.

That being said.... I wish I could lock most other computer and phone users in a sterilized cage. I don't mind taking risks and cleaning up my own messes when I goof up, but I'm not a fan of having to save everyone else when they do something stupid and don't know how to react.